(Press-News.org) WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – July 12, 2013 – Older African-American and Hispanic men who have survived cancer are less likely than their white counterparts to see a specialist or receive basic preventive care, such as vaccinations, according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
Researchers examined racial/ethnic disparities in health care receipt among a nationally representative sample of male cancer survivors. They found that disparities are evident among older, but not younger, cancer survivors, despite their access to Medicare.
Lead author Nynikka Palmer, Dr.P.H., a postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest Baptist, said they identified 2,714 men 18 and older from the 2006-2010 National Health Interview Survey who reported a history of cancer. The researchers looked at health care receipt in four self-reported measures: primary care visit, specialist visit, flu vaccination and pneumonia vaccination.
"Overall, our results suggest that older minority male cancer survivors may need specific support to ensure they receive necessary post-treatment care," Palmer said.
The study was recently published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Public Health.
Even when the researchers adjusted for factors that contribute to disparities, such as education and health insurance, they found that African American and Hispanic male cancer survivors 65 years and older may not be receiving appropriate follow-up care and preventive care. Palmer said this is a concern "because regular follow-up care is important to monitor for recurrence, new cancers, and late and long-term effects of cancer and its treatment, particularly for those with more co-morbidities."
Overall, among older survivors, approximately 39 percent of African-Americans and 42 percent of Hispanics did not see a specialist, compared with 26 percent of older non-Hispanic whites. Likewise, about 40 percent of African-American and Hispanic cancer survivors did not receive the flu vaccination, compared with 22 percent of non-Hispanic white cancer survivors.
Similarly, 51 percent of African-Americans and 59 percent of Hispanic cancer survivors did not report receiving the pneumonia vaccine, compared with 29 percent of non-Hispanic whites.
"These findings are consistent with other reports of health care use among cancer survivors and suggest there may be differences in types of Medicare health plans, supplemental insurance and out-of-pocket costs among older survivors that could be contributing to this disparity," Palmer said.
Palmer said further study is needed to identify other factors that may influence racial/ethnic disparities among male survivors, such as patients' beliefs about care after cancer and patient-provider communication.
INFORMATION:
Funding for the study was provided by The National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health grants 1R03CA156641 and 5R25CA122061. Co-authors include Kathryn E. Weaver, Ph.D, Lingyi Lu, M.S., L. Douglas Case, Ph.D., and Ann M. Geiger, Ph.D., all of Wake Forest Baptist, and Tisha M. Felder, Ph.D., M.S.W. of the University of South Carolina.
END
AMHERST, Mass. – A new study by psychology researchers suggests that whether parents are gay, lesbian or straight, how well they work together as a couple and support each other in parenting is linked to fewer behavior problems among their adopted children and is more important than their sexual orientation.
Rachel H. Farr at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Charlotte J. Patterson at the University of Virginia report their findings from this first empirical examination of differences and similarities in co-parenting among lesbian, gay and heterosexual adoptive ...
Typhoon Soulik's eyewall appears to have rebuilt as evidenced in NASA satellite imagery. Soulik is approaching Taiwan and is forecast to make landfall in southeastern China over the weekend of July 13 and 14.
On July 12 at 05:05 UTC (1:05 a.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Typhoon Soulik approaching Taiwan. The image clearly showed a tight, powerful ring of thunderstorms around Soulik's center with a small eye in the center. Soulik underwent eyewall reconstruction ...
NOAA's GOES-13 satellite spotted the remnant clouds and showers from former Tropical Storm Chantal lingering over the Bahamas on July 12. Chantal's chances for regeneration are diminishing because of upper-level winds.
A visible image from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite at 9:45 a.m. EDT on July 12, 2013 showed Chantal's remnant clouds and showers moving north in the Atlantic. The image of Chantal's remnants resembled the sideways view of a jellyfish. The GOES image was created by NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The National Hurricane ...
Baltimore, MD—Proper tissue function and regeneration is supported by stem cells, which reside in so-called niches. New work from Carnegie's Yixian Zheng and Haiyang Chen identifies an important component for regulating stem cell niches, with impacts on tissue building and function. The results could have implications for disease research. It is published by Cell Stem Cell.
Lamins are proteins that the major structural component of the material that lines the inside of a cell's nucleus. Lamins have diverse functions, including suppressing gene expression. It has been ...
VIDEO:
Watch the changing dust density and the growth of structure in this simulated debris disk, which extends about 100 times farther from its star than Earth's orbit around the sun....
Click here for more information.
Many young stars known to host planets also possess disks containing dust and icy grains, particles produced by collisions among asteroids and comets also orbiting the star. These debris disks often show sharply defined rings or spiral patterns, features ...
A natural tissue graft can spur regeneration of cartilage and improve symptoms in patients who have cartilage damage in their knee, according to a study by researchers from Hospital for Special Surgery. The new research, the first case-series evaluation of De Novo NT Natural Tissue Graft, will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM), to be held July 11-14, in Chicago.
"The results at this time are encouraging," said lead author of the study Scott Rodeo, M.D., orthopedic surgeon and co-chief of the sports medicine ...
MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Inflammation. The word typically has a negative connotation. Arthritis … infection … numerous maladies come to mind.
But a Kansas State University researcher found that inflammation that occurs naturally in dairy cows the first few days after giving birth may play a surprisingly beneficial role in the complex process of going from late pregnancy to lactation.
"We know that during the first several days after giving birth and going into the lactating phase, dairy cows naturally experience some degree of inflammation," said Barry Bradford, associate ...
LEMONT, Ill. – Doctors have a new way of thinking about how to treat heart and skeletal muscle diseases. Body builders have a new way of thinking about how they maximize their power. Both owe their new insight to high-energy X-rays, a moth and cloud computing.
The understanding of how muscles get their power has been greatly expanded with new results published online July 10 in the Royal Society journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The Royal Society is the U.K.'s national academy of sciences.
The basics of how a muscle generates power remain the same: Filaments ...
Scientists have created a virtual model of the brain that daydreams like humans do.
Researchers created the computer model based on the dynamics of brain cells and the many connections those cells make with their neighbors and with cells in other brain regions. They hope the model will help them understand why certain portions of the brain work together when a person daydreams or is mentally idle. This, in turn, may one day help doctors better diagnose and treat brain injuries.
"We can give our model lesions like those we see in stroke or brain cancer, disabling groups ...
TEMPE, Ariz. -- A new way to look at cancer -- by tracing its deep evolutionary roots to the dawn of multicellularity more than a billion years ago -- has been proposed by Paul Davies of Arizona State University's Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science in collaboration with Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University. If their theory is correct, it promises to transform the approach to cancer therapy, and to link the origin of cancer to the origin of life and the developmental processes of embryos.
Davies and Lineweaver are both theoretical physicists ...
